Lots Going On.

First off, its seems that Italy is now firmly in the sights of the financial speculators, with rumours that Italian Banks are seriously exposed to risk and will fail a new stress test when it is implemented. This is more extremely bad news for the UK, as we've made the financial sector the powerhouse of our economy.

As I blogged 3 years ago or more, whilst we continue to have financial uncertainty, the economy will continue to be in the toilet. You cannot have serious economic growth without a serious amount of confidence in the financial sector. Whilst banks remain over exposed to toxic debt and the financials in the City of London remain exposed directly and through derivatives, growth will continue to flatline.

I said all those years ago that it will take more than a decade to recover from the crash of 2007/8 and here we are almost half a decade later, still in the doldrums. We are to all intents and purposes in a great depression and its about time we started acting like we were. We need to start making solid financial foundations by changing the economic mix back from high-risk virtual financials and services over to real-life, low-risk buyable economic generators like  manufacturing.

Unfortunately instead. our government insists on giving away money it doesn't have to finance "bail-outs" and "rescue packages"; all of which are just throwing money away. Our finance sector is heavily exposed thanks to credit default swaps and other forms of loan insurance.

We really are in a pickle, especially as the government continues to put its head in the sand and ignore the root of the problem and the real size of it.

Before the election I said the government had to come clean about the size of the crisis in order to get the country to follow it. Unfortunately they continue to fob the public off with illusions, half-truths and lies. Instead we get diversion tactics and smokescreens such as the phone hacking affair.

Yes, the "phone hacking" affair, which has been blown out of proportion by the government, eager to kill a number of birds with one stone. First is the aforementioned diversion, second is a chance to scare and muzzle a serious political threat, third is the chance to stop Rupert Murdoch from gaining too much influence via the media and finally it provides an opportunity to legislate the press.

If this was a low-ranking issue, all of the evidence would have been released, but there's the fingerprint of media management all over this affair. The constant drip-drip of anti Murdoch evidence, designed to keep the affair in the media spotlight is a sure sign of news manipulation/management.

The outcome of it all will be interesting to observe, but I fear the worst.

The News International Affair Gathers Pace.

Listening to Radio 4 news coverage on the phone hacking affair on the way to work and on the way back home today, the game seemed to move on from phone hacking to stopping News International from owning BSkyB.

There has been very vehement opposition to the NotW and News International in general on the BBC over the past few days, with the ramping up of allegations (and they are only allegations, based on names found in the possession of the private investigator employed by the News of the World to listen to people's voice mails) from celebs we don't really care about, to murder victims, soldiers killed in action and victims of terrorism.

Robert Peston's piece on the closure of the NotW on this evening's Radio 4 news was especially discomforting. He puts a strange emphasis on words at the best of times, but this evening was excruciating to listen to.

Not surprisingly, this evening's Question Time lead with the cynical question if the closure of the NotW was a ploy to insulate it from the rest of News International. How about the rest of the news media? I'm convinced that the culture of listening in to personal messages is not restricted to just News International owned newspapers.

Autonomous Mind has a view about the baying for Murdoch blood by the BBC and other newspapers. Its an interesting viewpoint and he's once again eloquently stated something that was in the back of my mind as I listened to the news today.

Its interesting that in the eyes of the BBC Rupert Murdoch can do no good. Having announced the closure of the NotW he's now being castigated for ending the jobs of the hundreds of people employed to produce the newspaper.

One final note is that it seems to have gone very quiet about the ineffectiveness of the original Police enquiry into phone hacking. It needs to be investigated how on earth that enquiry couldn't probe deeply enough to find the reams of evidence that now appears to be available. People must have perjured themselves or the Police must have been incompetent, or both. Or possibly political pressure was put on the investigators to do as little as possible. If that's the case, its very much in the public interest to also investigate the relationship between the press and politicians.

UPDATE:

I just had the thought: what effect would having hundreds of disgruntled ex-NotW employees have on the flow of information about the culture in the newspaper? If I was a soon to be ex employee, I'd be lining up a deal with a competitor to blow the whistle on what went on behind the scenes and how culpable senior figures  in the management are in the illegal activities.

More on the Police (Detention and Bail) bill

Details of the bill are now public.


Currently it doesn't seek to expand on restoring the status quo that the Police had unlawfully established, but there's time during its passage through Parliament.

The first interesting aspect is that it explicitly states "The amendments made by subsections (1) and (2) are deemed always to have had effect." which makes the change retrospective. I assume this is to stop many thousands of claims for compensation due to unlawful detention and the rest of the can of worms opened last week.


Second, it restores the ability to arrest people, interrogate them and then spend months trawling for evidence while keeping them on a short leash, forced to report regularly to Police stations. All before the Police have enough evidence to press charges. They can be arrested, released and re-arrested over and over: several times if necessary as long as the periods of detention don't add up to the maximum.

One final point is that when the so-called crisis broke last week, government went straight to ACPO to ask what they should do. In effect, Parliament ceeded creation of the law to those that enforce the law, something that really, really, should not be happening. I've said before its up to Parliament to create the laws and for the Police to enforce them. Its especially not right that ACPO, an unaccountable limited company should dictate laws to be created by Parliament.

I'll also wager that during what limited debates are allowed on this bill that not one MP asks the questions why was the Police interpretation of the law on bail so wrong, why did it continue for so long and why we need to change back to the old system. I'd have thought it was quite obvious that it would be fairer to arrest people once there was enough evidence against them to charge them, rather than arrest them and then keep them in limbo for many months while the evidence is gathered.